A strong woman never gives up

Writer Elaine Davie

Shangaan village life in rural Limpopo has changed very little over the past half century or so. And at the centre of this traditional lifestyle are the women. It is they who fetch the water from the river and firewood from the bush, who plant the seeds and hoe the fields and who cook and clean, wash the clothes and care for the children. It is a hard life. Artist Phillemon Hlungwani knows this very well; it is how and where he grew up.

The headline artist at this year’s FynArts Festival, Phillemon’s exhibition, which is presented in association with Knysna Fine Arts, pays tribute to the strong women in his own and neighbouring villages in the Giyani district of Limpopo Province. Now in his early forties, Phillemon has lived in Johannesburg since he matriculated and has exhibited all over this country and abroad, but his ties with his cultural heritage and xiTsonga, his mother tongue, remain the well-spring of his creativity.

Two of the large etchings which will be on show at Phillemon Hlungwani's ehibition during the Hermanus FynArts Festival, entitled A strong woman never gives up.

From primary to high school he was educated in Thomo, his home village and it is quite extraordinary under these circumstances that he was able to take Art for matric, obtaining an A. He is filled with gratitude for the people who played a pivotal role in this achievement: his single, hard-working mother, his art teacher, motivator and friend, Muxe Moses Mthombeni, and Queen Mtileni. Why this remote part of the country should have produced such an inordinately high percentage of South Africa’s top artists and fine-crafts practitioners, including his family-member Jackson Hhlungwani, is an interesting matter of conjecture.

With his Art distinction in hand, Phillemon was able to obtain a place at the Johannesburg Art Foundation, before studying printmaking under the mentorship of Kim Berman, the late Nhlahla Xaba and Osiah Masukameng at the Artist Proof Studio. He later completed an Art teacher’s training course at the Wits School of Art. During his years as a student, he says he used to wash taxis for food money and sometimes do sketches at malls for R50 or R100, which he used to send to his mother.

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